Читать книгу The Power of Social Intelligence: 10 ways to tap into your social genius - Тони Бьюзен, Tony Buzan - Страница 8

‘Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.’

(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Your body is impeccably designed for the purpose of communicating with your fellow human beings. Your voice and your words obviously play a vital part in the art and science of social interaction. Be fully aware, however, that an even greater percentage of your communication with others is conveyed by – your body. In fact, studies have shown that fully 55 per cent of all meaning conveyed in any act of communication is given by your physical demeanour!

Your body will communicate, without words, whether you are happy or sad, well or unwell, fit or unfit, removed or engaged, confident or nervous, enthusiastic or bored, interested or indifferent, open or defensive, socially ill at ease or socially confident and in command.

And, of course, other people’s bodies will communicate the same things to you. If you are aware of this, you will be able to ‘read’ other people more accurately and empathetically, and so boost your Social Intelligence.

To give you an immediate experience of this, try the following game:

You are to imagine that you are an actor on stage, miming ultimate depression, despondency and despair.

Imagine that you have woken up in the morning to be told by the person you love the most that they find you unutterably grey, boring and dull and wish to have nothing more to do with you. Immediately after this you receive a message that your best friend is gravely ill. This is followed by a phone call from your bank manager informing you that you have just gone bankrupt and will have to sell immediately the house you have lived in and loved for many years.

As you sink into this imaginary total depression, observe what happens to your body. Check the following things:

 Your diminishing height

 Your posture

 Your energy levels

 Your senses and their lessening alertness

 Your breathing and its reduced depth and strength

 Your motivational levels

 Your desire for social contact

Now imagine exactly the opposite scenario, one of extreme joy and happiness. Imagine that you have woken up, and the person whom you have secretly loved and desired for many years tells you that they find you the most amazing, attractive, entertaining and wonderful person they have ever met; your gravely ill friend has just had a miraculous recovery; and you have a call informing you that you have just won the Lottery Jackpot.

Now check your posture, energy and motivational levels, the alertness of your senses and your sociability, and feel the difference!

The game you have just played demonstrates how every cell of your body acts as a major communicator to other people. Being aware of this allows you to begin the journey to becoming a master reader of body language. The findings of the game are confirmed in formal studies, like the ones that follow:

Case Study – See and Tell

Psychologists Geoffrey Beattie and Heather Shovelton of the University of Manchester have found that gesture helps convey huge amounts of information. They discovered that when people see storytellers’ gestures as well as hearing their voices, they pick up about 10 per cent more accurate information about the story than when they are listening to the voice alone. Beattie and Shovelton say: ‘gestures are every bit as rich communicatively as speech; meaning is divided between the hand and the mouth’.

Case Study – Mirror Neurons

An American study has shown that gesture and speech are simply two outlets for identical thought-processes, and both are designed to help you convey those thought-processes to other individuals.

Joanna Iverson, from the University of Missouri, and her colleague Esther Thelen, from the University of Bloomington, Indiana, point to the direct link between movement and meaning that is found in a group of brain cells known as ‘mirror neurons’, confirmed by a study of monkeys.

The mirror neurons fire both when a monkey makes a particular movement, and also when it watches another monkey making the same movement. Intriguingly, these mirror neurons are found in the region of the monkey’s brain that exactly corresponds to the speech-production region of the human brain.

Who Am I?

‘If you want to know yourself, see how others behave; if you want to understand others, look in your own heart.’

(Friedrich von Schiller)

The secret of Social Intelligence – to building rapport with others, setting them at ease in your company, making people genuinely glad to be with you, and mixing easily with all types of people – is to ‘know yourself’.

If you are comfortable ‘being in your skin’, you will have inner confidence about yourself, and will know your values and standards. That confidence will radiate out from you, through your body language, and will rub off positively on the people around you.

You can use this Socially Intelligent knowledge to your advantage, even if you are in a situation where confidence is the last thing you are feeling! If you stand with poise and make eye contact, you will exude an aura of confidence. Even better – the more you ‘act’ confident, the more confident you will find yourself becoming!

However, you should be aware that sometimes the signals you are sending out are not the ones you think you are! An acquaintance discovered that while she aimed to project an ultra-feminine and ultra-sexy image, she had no idea that this image was actually interpreted as being overpowering and intimidating!

Who Are You?

You now know that your body language reveals your true thoughts and feelings, despite yourself. And so, if you become adept at reading other people’s body language – sensing whether they are uncomfortable, bored, enthusiastic, upset or worried – you will increase your Social Intelligence multiple-fold.

Studies, like the ones below, have demonstrated that those people able to read body language have many advantages over those who cannot.

Case Study – Read Me, Benefit You!

A Harvard psychologist, Robert Rosenthal, and his students devised a test of people’s ability to read non-verbal body signals and language. Rosenthal and his students tested over 7,000 people both in the United States and 18 other countries.

In the tests the subjects were shown a series of videotapes of a young woman expressing a wide range of feelings. The scenes depicted hatred and loathing, a jealous rage, peace and tranquillity, asking forgiveness, motherly love, showing gratitude, and passion.

In all the videos, the sound was muffled so that no speech could be heard. In addition, in each portrayal, one or more of the channels of non-verbal communication had been blanked out. For example, in one the body might be blocked out and only the facial expression shown, in another the facial expressions removed while all bodily gestures remained, and so on.

The results?

A direct correlation was found between being able to read body language and being more sensitive, more well-adjusted emotionally, more outgoing, and, most importantly, more popular.

You will be pleased to learn that this popularity was also directly correlated with success in romantic and sexual relationships!

The success generated by possessing Social Intelligence skills is also reflected in schools. The American Psychological Society reported the results of tests done with 1,011 children that showed that those children who were able to read body language were among the most emotionally stable, did better in academic subjects, and were the most popular.

Understanding body language is of vital importance in social communication. A good friend of mine observed that by playing just three minutes of golf with a new acquaintance, you will learn nearly everything you need to know about that individual, including their ability to accept and learn from success and failure, their generosity, their concern for others, their appreciation of nature, their humour (or lack of it!), how positive/negative they were, their general energy levels, their degree of focus and their honesty.

The Secret of Social Intelligence – Smile!

There is a very simple secret to Social Intelligence – smile at people!

A human smile radiates warmth, confidence, a positive attitude, happiness and, very significantly, a welcoming openness to others.

‘A man without a smiling face must not open a shop.’

(Chinese proverb)

A simple smile is the best way to win friends and influence people. The thing that first attracts most people to someone else is their smile. And when we see a smile, our brains trigger our own smiling muscles, so that we smile back!

Brian Bates, co-author of the BBC book and television series The Human Face, confirms the importance of smiling in society:

‘We would often rather share our confidences, hopes and money with smilers for deep reasons which are often beyond our conscious awareness. Spontaneous smilers have been shown to have a more successful life in personal and career terms.’

Smiles take much less effort than frowns, involve far less muscular tension, and are more instantaneous and spontaneous. The universe even rewards us for smiling! When we smile, the ‘smiling reflex’ boosts our production of endorphins, the body’s natural energizers and pain-killers.

It is now time for your first Social Workout – to be approached with a smile on your face!

Social Workout

Smile and the World Smiles With You

Recently a witty little poem on smiling appeared on the Internet. I have slightly adjusted it, and recommend that you read it, pass it on, and immediately begin practising what it suggests!

Smiling is infectious; you catch it like the flu,

When someone smiled at me today, I started smiling too.

I passed around the corner and someone saw my grin

And when he smiled I realized I’d passed it on to him.

I thought about that smile and then I realized its worth,

A single smile, one just like mine, could travel round the earth.

So if you feel a smile begin, don’t leave it undetected:

Let’s start an epidemic quick, and get the world infected!

Smile First

Make sure that you greet people with a smile. People remember first impressions most strongly, so this will be what they remember of you. This is called the Primacy Effect, or the principle of ‘First Things First’, which we will explore in more detail in Chapter 4. Smiling will get the social interaction off to a positive and uplifting start. You will be gently taking control of the meeting in a ‘win-win’ way.

Make Your Actions Congruent with Your Words

When you are describing things, allow your body to be the natural musical instrument and artist that it is. Make sounds that mimic what you are describing. With your hands sculpt the objects and scenes you are describing.

Check for Congruence/Incongruence in Others

Check for the congruence between what people’s words are saying and what their bodies are saying. You will often find that they are completely opposite. You can practise this Social Intelligence muscle when watching television, especially news and advertisements. Keep a note of some of the more blatant examples of incongruence – they make good conversation pieces themselves!

One extremely amusing instance of incongruent actions occurred when I was at a cocktail party.

I noticed that two businessmen who were supposed to be negotiating with each other were doing an extraordinary dance. Every time one of them moved towards the other, the second almost immediately moved away. It was as if they were two similar poles of a magnet, where the repelling force prevented them from ever making contact. No matter how hard the first tried to get closer, which he was obviously trying to do, the second always moved away. On and on they went, until they had snaked and zig-zagged their way around the entire room!

They were obviously making each other extremely uncomfortable, and not understanding why.

Later on in the evening, I asked them, separately, where they came from. As you might expect, the first one stood very close to me, the second at some considerable distance!

You will not be surprised to learn that the first one came from New York, where closeness to people is part of everyday life, and the second from a vast ranch in Texas, where close contact was very rare.

Being aware of people’s different ‘comfort zone’ is a very important part of Social Intelligence. If you can make people feel comfortable by not invading their personal space, they will immediately be more willing to talk to and spend time with you.

Meeting and Greeting With Feeling

Be particularly alert to body language when you are meeting and greeting people. Remember the two scenarios you imagined before (see here) and the extreme positions your body took. Most people will be somewhere between the two.

Once again become the body-language-detective, and quickly assess the many non-verbal messages that are being given during those first vital moments.

If shaking hands, play close attention to the energy of the hand you are shaking – it can speak volumes. In the same way, make sure that your own handshake is firm (not too firm!) and welcoming. Make sure you make eye contact with the other person. Brief eye contact acknowledges the other person as being of interest to you – which will make them more interested in you!

Use Appropriate Gestures of Affection

Some cultures use hugs and embraces much more than others. In Russia, for example, hugs are a normal part of greeting people, whereas in Britain, people tend to be more reserved.

Psychiatrist Dr Harold Falk has listed some of the benefits of hugging: ‘Hugging can lift depression, enabling the body’s immunization system to become tuned up. Hugging breathes fresh life into tired bodies and makes you feel younger and more vibrant.’

In support of this, Helen Colton, author of The Joy of Touching, points out that the haemoglobin in your blood increases significantly when you are touched and hugged. As it is the haemoglobin that carries the vital supplies of oxygen to your heart, brain and body, hugging can be seen both as a life-giver and a life-saver, as well as a wonderful expression of Social Intelligence and confidence.

Mirror Talk

Before any social meeting, check yourself – ideally in a full-length mirror. Rather than just casually checking yourself and your appearance, imagine that you are the Costume Director and Producer on a film set. Your function is to make sure that the clothes your star actor (you!) is wearing are perfectly appropriate for the role, and to make sure that your star looks so attractive that other people will actively want to make contact. When you are dressed well and appropriately for the occasion, you and your body feel at ease and confident.

‘All the world’s a stage …’

Make a habit of ‘people watching’. It is a constant, entertaining, informative (and free!) theatre. Make yourself an increasing expert on the intricate body-language conversations that ‘speak to you’ on the streets, in restaurants, at social events, on beaches, and in all places where human beings congregate. When you see examples of particularly superb body-to-brain communication, mimic them and incorporate them in your own body language.

Social Brain Boosters

 I am developing my body to be a superb communication device.

 My words and actions are increasingly congruent.

 I am spreading smiles wherever I go.

In the next chapter we will consider another vital non-verbal part of communicating with other people – listening to them!